(WITHDRAWN) "Trying to Stay Calm for the Kids": Mothers' Parenting Stress and Resource Access Under Stay-at-Home Orders in the Midwest

Background and Purpose: The social and economic stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may be particularly acute in families with young children (under age 6) because of the supervision and care requirements associated with preschoolers, toddlers, and babies. Due to the increase in stress caused by COVID-19, both the number and the types of families needing help from social service, community, and government agencies may increase substantially. This study examined how socio-economic status (SES) shapes how mothers of young children experience and manage parenting stress during the state-mandated stay-at-home orders. More specifically, this study explored mothers’ perceptions of material and social resources that they identified as helpful in terms of parenting their young children.

Research Design: Data were collected from a longitudinal online survey of mothers (N = 700) of children under age 6 living. Participants were residents of “Midwestern Consortium” states (MI, OH, WI, IL, IN, MN, and KY); these states agreed to work in close coordination regarding reopening their economies in May 2020 after stay-at-home orders were issues in March. Participants were recruited by an online research firm. To capture how stress levels might be impacted by exogenous forces, such as economies reopening, wave one of the survey was launched the week of April 27^th.

The wave one survey contained six open-ended questions about stressful situations and resources that mothers may have found helpful in the past 30 days. These questions provided the primary evidence for a conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Codes were derived inductively from the text excerpts during data analysis. Relationships between codes and other demographic variables in the survey were then analyzed, generating themes (see Deterding & Waters, 2018). As data collection is ongoing, analysis presented here is preliminary.

Preliminary Results: Two preliminary themes were created from the textual data. Many mothers reported low stress levels and that “nothing [had] changed.” Whereas, mothers who found themselves working from home, without regular childcare, or with increased financial stress, reported challenges in “trying to stay calm for the kids.” A plurality of mothers cited the federal stimulus payment as a helpful resource for reducing financial stress, however, only about 78% of mothers reported that their household had received stimulus checks by May 7th. Among mothers who drew on additional resources to manage stress from an array of private, community, or government sources, approximately 25% stated they did not feel they received the help they needed.

Conclusions and Implications: The stress of parenting young children during the stay-at-home orders spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be unevenly distributed. Stay at home moms were less likely to state that they were stressed, suggesting that children exposed to high stress parents during the pandemic may be disproportionately children who return to childcare once social distancing ends. Notably, mothers perceived the stimulus cash payments to be directly related to parenting stress reduction. These findings have implications for both low-touch policy interventions such as universal basic income as well as high touch policy interventions like universal pre-school.